Fate and Chaos, Intertwined
by Chris Walker
Summary: Having been rendered inanimate following his battle with the Aspects years prior, Chromatus, the foul and unnatural creation of Nefarian, is kept under careful watch in Northrend. Revived at long last following a devastating ambush by the Twilight's Hammer, his weakened self topples into a deep chasm. Trapped with him is one of his crippled captors, the blue dragon Tetricugosa.
1. Prologue

_I dreamed._

 _I have dreamed for a time I could never fathom. So long. So very, very long. For the few, lengthy years I have endured, each one has only lazily traipsed by without care nor feeling, passing me as gnats drone past a fallen log. I have dreamed in countless centuries, that I have seen the trees in my greatest reverie fall from the rampaging storms and mountains in my worst nightmares reduced to dust by the passing of the ages._

 _For a while, I thought myself awake and alive. I thought my surroundings real when they were but paltry illusions brought forth by my subconscious. In the mind, I found how desires could be made manifest by simple thought. I learned to discern reality from illusion, and for it, I hold a strength in cunning rivaling that of the physical might possessed by my awakened self. Now, I use the visions I formulate to study and plan strategies, some of them so complicated I nearly find myself getting caught up in them like a fly in a web._

 _Indubitably_ _, my heritage has allowed me this skill - perhaps an arranged, or serendipitous consequence of my father's doing. To dream so lucidly as this has taught me much, and I learn more with every fading second. Dreams do not hold, so simply, the stuff of deception and lies. Dreams can hold_ power _. Power over the mind, power over the future, power over life itself._

 _As I have dreamed, I have prepared. I have plotted. I have looked forward, and I have reflected. Reflected back to the brief moment I was alive and how I was brought so low by the powers of the many. How I had my newly-given life stolen from me by the meek and fearful. How I might learn from it. How to overcome and adapt._

 _My being will not end there, as I thought it did, for a time. I am destined to rise up and bring life, at last, to my dragonflight. Not just my parent, nor the ones he served have chosen me to act as their sword, but fate has as well. It is my birthright, mine alone, and mine to manipulate as I so choose to. I shall not forsake it. I shall realize it._

 _I will awaken soon. I have felt it._ Seen _it. It is no simple, insufferable illusion brought forth by my unconscious mind, but a fact as certain as the rain that falls from the sky. It is no meager and deluded wish. It is_ truth _. A truth I will live to accomplish - the truth I will show to this entire, miserable world once my bonds are shattered and I am freed again_ _._

 _I am the first, true child of the chromatic dragonflight. I am Chromatus. And I shall not be so easily denied my promised destiny..._


	2. Chapter 1

The wind howled and screamed as it wandered aimlessly through the gelid world it was born in. It twisted its way through even the highest of mountains and through even the deepest of caverns, chasms and crevices. Carried on its squealing current was a most dreadfully lonesome pitch, befitting of something drifting about in such hostile terrain. Just as well, it could have been recognized as a thing in either fear or pain, had it possessed life.

It seemed that there was only one being around the desolate area it passed through to not simply hear it, but sympathize with its sense of solitude.

That being was the lone Tetricugosa, and she failed to find sleep as night beset the frozen, near-barren lands of Northrend. She rarely ever did so easily anymore. Given the duty she had been entrusted with, and the graveness of the situation that had come before her, it wasn't too hard to discern why.

Standing tall on her four tree trunk-sized legs and possessing rich azure and white scales over the entirety of her mighty, winged form, most could tell that she was a blue dragoness from the titular dragonflight; one of the many direct spawn of their progenitor and former Aspect of the sorcerous dragonflight, Malygos the Spell-Weaver. It had been years since Malygos was slain in the Nexus War he himself started, following his crazed bid to retake the supposedly recklessly-used magic from the mortal beings of Azeroth by eliminating them all. Since then, and fluently mirroring the thousands of years prior to when Malygos' genocidal and short-lived war took place, life for her kind had been... extraordinarily difficult, to state the least of it.

After going through the numerous losses in the Nexus Wars, and then suffering nearly as much as any other dragonflight during the devastating Cataclysm that closely followed, the blue dragonflight had been disbanded by their new Aspect, Kalecgos. Tetricugosa, bound like some captive bird with clipped wings, could only watch skywards as most of her siblings abandoned their homeland, flying off to other parts of the world to tend to themselves and craft their own allegiances.

She felt tempted to join them; in fact, she truly envied their newfound freedom. But there was something that mattered more than the desire in her heart to take to the sky. It mattered far, far more than gaining the right to seek out and bed down in foreign lands. Duty came before all that. She had a solemn duty she _chose_ to partake in. And this duty was to watch over and diligently guard the only observed exemplar of the unnatural chromatic dragonflight in existence.

 _Chromatus._

Chromatus, and by extension the chromatic dragonflight itself, was artificially created by the cruel and calculating black dragon Nefarian; eldest son of the former Earth-Warder-turned mad servant of the Old Gods, the black dragon Aspect Deathwing the Destroyer. Chromatus was a towering fiend in its most blatant form - his power was as bizarre as his startling visage. His queer appearance was most vividly distinguished by the five heads he possessed, each one representing one of the dragonflights and bearing the respective powers they had. He was made to be perhaps the greatest weapon of the Old Gods' servants, and was only brought to life by an ungodly mixture of stolen Nexus magic. Indeed was he a mighty, murderous foe to contend with, for it took only the collective power of the five Aspects themselves to finally defeat him, with the empty stead of Warden of the Earth being taken by the mortal orc shaman, Go'el.

While the day Chromatus was challenged by the Aspects had been won and with evil's plans foiled, to everyone's horror, they were unable to truly destroy the accursed creation; merely render him back into harmless inanimation. Dark spells and powerful magic had been woven into Chromatus' unnatural frame, protecting him from any sort of physical or magical harm. Knowing what had to be done, the Aspects all called forth a single, willing representative from each of their uncorrupted dragonflights, tasking them to watch over him and hopefully make sure the dreaded beast stayed lifeless, together.

Up until recently, the many-headed dragon's massive body lied within a specialized arcane prison, dormant and secluded, kept safe away from the world and whatever dark forces that would seek to use such a forbidden power for their own wicked machinations. Everything was pleasantly still for a few, quiet years, when something peculiar and perturbing occurred. The prison was breached by unseen forces not a week prior, touched and tampered with by ill magics; the source of which not even the magic-attuned Tetricugosa could locate. With the cage that Chromatus had been kept in now rendered inert, a new plot had been hastily formulated.

With only the utmost discretion in their movements, the four dragons who vowed to guard Chromatus dragged the free, but still lifeless abomination from the ruined vault that once held him and across Northrend's frozen landscape, hoping to reach and re-incarcerate their wretched charge in a new, more secure arcane prison. One that would hold him until a way to properly dispose of it came to fruition.

Tetricugosa had been on edge since the journey began, her mind sharp and ready for nearly any situation. Even now she was filled to the brimming point with caution, feeling as though a set of malevolent eyes insidiously observed her and her companions constantly from beyond some hidden veil. Watching and waiting. Seeking a single moment to exploit and strike at.

How the days ahead would fare, few could truly predict. An _oh_ , how this awful fact troubled the blue dragoness so...

"Tetri, you should be sleeping."

Tetricugosa's eyes widened in alarm as she heard the familiar voice enter her ear, calling her by a nickname only one, peculiar individual referred to her as. Her horned head spinning about, she witnessed an emerald-tinted shape hovering almost soundlessly on a set of powerful wings a short distance away from her. As she suspected, it was merely Alucinorus; a great green dragon and fellow guardian of the body of Chromatus.

She had been so engrossed in her own worrisome thoughts that she hadn't noticed his coming. He grew closer to her icy perch, soon joining her on it. Tetricugosa studied her longtime ally closely when he elegantly landed, witnessing how his jade scales seemed to glisten and twinkle like a cluster of gemstones in the silver rays of the moonlight, highlighting his smooth, handsome visage. Realizing how distracting he had become just by arriving, she quickly shook her head and looked away, back out to the rock and ice-set world that lay before her.

"Leave me, Alucinorus," she asked him quietly. "I wish to be alone. Your prattle is... unneeded."

"'Prattle'?" The green wyrm reeled back, sounding most insulted, but only playfully so. He chuckled, "Tetri, I only look out for your well being. It's been days since you last slept. _Days._ It's unhealthy to go so long without resting your weary mind. If you're still as beautifully astute as when I first laid eyes on you, then you would know that, too."

"When it is being preoccupied by troubling thoughts that need to be tempered, well..." Tetricugosa inhaled a particularly deep breath of the cold Northrend air that she had breathed in for most of her life. "I believe my actions for remaining awake and aware are justified."

"You keep your mind so strained so that it may think to the future?"

"I suppose one could word it as such."

His neck tilting thoughtfully, Alucinorus' long tail swished about behind him, sliding over the snow and ice that made up the ground they stood on. He opened his jaws and closed it again twice, clicking his pearly fangs together as he stewed on the conundrum that had consumed Tetricugosa. "Iniquity stirs, and trouble brews. Malignant entities ever seek our destruction, and our strength is constantly tested. But we endure, do we not?"

A low rumble of clear annoyance reverberated from within the blue dragoness' throat, but she agreed with her ally. "Yes, I suppose we do."

The cold air seemingly becoming that much colder, an awkward few seconds traipsed by, but Alucinorus managed to end it. "Tetri, what is your favorite dream? What is the sight you always wish to see?" It was a query Aluc always asked her, especially if her mood was less than blithe. In turn, Tetricugosa gave him an answer; one that never changed, but somehow seemed just as fresh as the first time she replied. Now didn't seem like such a moment she wanted to indulge in, but there was resistance in her alert mind, telling her to be at ease, if for but a few moments. For a good two minutes she was silent, attempting to keep herself from succumbing to the enticing lure. Aluc kept his stare and expression captivated and longing, waiting politely and patiently for the inevitable response.

Giving in at long last, the azure wyrm sighed and spoke, "I dream... of the night sky. I dream of extending my wings to their fullest and then take flight." As though about to do so, her wings lifted from her back and expanded, the leathery membrane holding them together the whistling wind. Closing her eyes, she retracted her flight appendages and folding them into more neat of a position behind her back. "To fly to until the entire world lies below me as but a speck. And then keep flying."

"To where, and why?"

"To the stars, and to other worlds beyond this one. So that I may witness and study their alien luster up close. So that the troubles that plague me here are as far behind me as possible."

"You wish to trade your troubles for riches? A pretty dream indeed," complimented Alucinorus. He turned to her after a few seconds, realizing she had gone silent. He soon realized that she had set her sights to the horizon in the far beyond, a somber expression painted over her beautiful draconic face.

 _But as pretty as it may be, and as wonderfully as any dream may be experienced, reality must also be taken into consideration_ wisely thought the green. Another few seconds passed without her expressing as much as a blink of her golden eyes, so Aluc huffed out a small, friendly laugh, shuffling himself just a little closer to her position. "To stare at those stars and worlds from way down here will have to do, it would seem."

"So it would," she finally responded.

His cheerful expression fading, Aluc watched as the blue dragon beside him lifted her strong azure head up, looking off into the night sky above as he suggested. He thought of what next to say, and his answer instinctively came to him the exact second he pondered his conundrum.

"Would you mind it so badly if I were to stare at them with you?"

Tetricugosa's stare shifted from grim to calm and pensive as those words were relayed to her. "Yes... yes, I suppose I would be fine with that."

She grinned a small grin, and Aluc's own only widened. Both now smiling as they were, and with the wind howling around their mighty, scaled shapes like a drifting, disembodied spirit, they watched the sky together. They watched it for many a long minute, gazing at the infinite cosmos that this planet of Azeroth drifted through like some mighty vessel in a sea of darkness. The stars glistened, and the occasional meteor burned up in the atmosphere as a faint streak of light. Tetricugosa mused on how it was as peaceful an experience as she could hope for in these trying times, when she felt something biting at her mind.

That irksome biting was a sense of desire. _Compulsive_ desire. Out of that single, gnawing sense of compulsive desire, she quickly snuck a glance Alucinorus' way, catching no more than a glimpse of her emerald-scaled companion before returning her view to the nocturnal heavens.

Unlike most other greens, which were a naturally shy group of beings that rarely had a wish to pursue any objective outside of their forest dominion and in the waking world, Alucinorus was a fairly outgoing individual. When his Aspect, Ysera the Awakened, searched for one in their ranks to act as a representative for the dragonflight in guarding the dormant creation of Nefarian, he volunteered himself without a second thought. Upon encountering his new ally Tetricugosa and her demeanor as uninviting cold, rigid and distant as Northrend itself, he seemed determined to make it his next mission to befriend her. What he accomplished, after no short amount of effort, was something so much more than that.

"So, Tetri," he said at last, turning to her expectantly. "Will you be returning with me to the others? Please, say yes. I wish so dearly to make your dreams become something of splendor and joy..."

Leaning toward his beloved, he nuzzled his head affectionately against hers, filling Tetricugosa with a warm, delightful sensation that made her attention to the frozen world around her seem to melt away. As the normally tense blue dragoness had first experienced from him some time ago, during the fragile times when he worked to earn her trust, Aluc adored the opportunity to alter her dreams into something she felt only content with. A master of the meditative powers of the unconscious world separated from his dragonflight's dear Emerald Dream, he could reach into Tetricugosa's sleeping mind with his own and soothe even her most violent and troubling nightmare with but a gentle touch.

At first thinking briefly of rebuffing his offer, Tetricugosa soon gave in to the temptation set before her and nuzzled him back, humming a small, grating titter, seeking more of that precious warmth he offered.

"I hate you sometimes, Alucinorus."

"No, you don't."

"I know."

* * *

The two dragons were witnessed departing from their perch and to the black sky by a lone figure skulking around in the shadows from far below the cliffside, unseen by any eyes, prying or not. Bearing the upright shape of a human, his head was clad in a dark hood, both shielding him from the harsh elements and partially obscuring his pallid face; his skin being nearly as white as the snow that he stood on. With the rest of his body concealed in heavy armor as dark as the night that covered him, he watched his prey fly off unperturbed.

As though his outward appearance wasn't unnerving enough, there was something more to him that many sensible beings in this reality would find equally disturbing. He was a part of the Twilight's Hammer; a former orcish clan in the First War and now nihilistic doomsday cult dedicated to the insane demands of the dreaded Old Gods. It was their ultimate goal to bring about the ruin, corruption, and eventual destruction of Azeroth in the world-ending event known to them as the Hour of Twilight. For the services he and many others had pledged to his gods, they had been blessed with unholy power.

And yet, during his everlasting tenure to the Old Gods, he had lost more than anyone could know in exchange for this unholy and evil power; his titles, his past accomplishments - even his name had become forgotten to him as his mind was wracked with insanity in its purest, most chaotic form. Under their twisted guidance he had formed a small band of fellow servants with the ambitious intention of securing and reviving the body of the mighty Chromatus.

As the now-gone dragons from before had accomplished, this man, too, began to slink away from the position where he had been spying from. As he trudged through the heavy and deep snow back to his band's base of operations, he thought to the foremost piece of his grand plans. In almost its entirety, the plan depended on a tool he had spent most of his life crafting to succeed - a weapon with the capacity to bring a mighty dragon low with but a toll given from its metal hide.

Chromatus... Chromatus was given life once before through an incalculable burst of arcane magic, only to be rendered inanimate once again after going through a most vicious struggle with the Aspects. He just needed but a spark to reignite the magnificent flame of his indomitable being. A single spark that only a living dragon could provide, willingly given or not. Should all he had schemed go through and bear its vile fruits, it would no doubt prove to be the final undoing of the dragonflights who guarded Azeroth for so unimaginably long.

And this nameless man, slave to a will his shattered mind could never comprehend, knew it was _he_ who would be destined to light it...


End file.
